Municipal Leaders Told State Aid To Be Limited

Municipalities Told State Aid To Be Limited

October 23, 1992|By MIKE SWIFT; Courant Staff Writer

CROMWELL — When he closed the General Assembly session in May, Gov. Lowell P. Weicker Jr. told legislators that the urban programs contained in his next budget would mean "cities without tears." But the message the administration gave several hundred city and town leaders Thursday sounded more like, "Don't put the handkerchiefs away yet."

Lt. Gov. Eunice S. Groark told about 700 officials at a Connecticut Conference of Municipalities convention that the administration is still working to assemble the urban plan to be announced in Weicker's budget address in February.

While the administration's urban initiative is not set, do not expect it to consist of large infusions of cash into the cities, said Groark, who is overseeing the administration's effort to put together an urban initiative.

Required spending increases to open new jails, to satisfy education grants to cities and towns and to maintain federally mandated entitlement programs, combined with the $440 million limit on spending increases imposed by the statutory state spending cap, are all barriers that will prevent Weicker from creating a Connecticut version of the Great Society, she said.

Expect more-modest, nuts-and-bolts programs, such as enabling legislation to allow cities and towns to save money by purchasing goods and services on a regional basis, an expansion of a recently announced state program that will use state money and bank loans to ease the credit crunch for small and medium businesses in cities or job training programs that would focus on allowing cities to reclaim derelict buildings and vacant lots for redevelopment, Groark said.

There also will be continuing aid deals tailored directly to a city's individual needs, Groark said, such as the state's recent package of a $4 million loan and $10 million in loan guarantees to help keep the Whalers hockey team in Hartford.

Groark's news was not the kind to earn a standing ovation from the audience of municipal leaders. Nor did it earn any praise from Weicker poltical foes, such as Republican State Chairman Richard Foley Jr.

"There were some encouraging notes, but after so much time passing, I would expect a little more detail and a little more substance," New Britain Mayor Donald J. DeFronzo said of Groark's address.

DeFronzo, who participated in a spring focus group with the administration to review the needs of the cities, said he was hoping Thursday to hear Groark talk about money for cities like New Britain. If the state provided New Britain with $500,000 more for police protection, for example, the city could put 10 or 11 more officers on the street, and that could make a big difference in public safety, DeFronzo said.

"I don't want to be totally negative about it. I think [the administration is] well-intentioned," DeFronzo said. "Anybody who would come here thinking there would be a barrel of money to dive into would be foolish."

In the spring, after the riots in Los Angeles, Weicker said increased aid to the cities would be one of three major priorities in the next budget he will propose. The other two priorities, he said, would be affordable health care for all state residents and achieving educational equality by ending segregation of minority students in the cities.

"For me, the next budget means cities without tears, children all equal in the promise of education, our sick cared for regardless of income," Weicker said in his session-closing speech to the legislature. "And we'll do that without new taxes. Not during what remains of my watch."

The "no new taxes" pledge is still the administration's intention, Groark said Thursday. And that decision, plus the fiscal contraints caused by a required $104 million increase for the Department of Correction and a $282 million increase required under current the Education Cost Sharing grant formulas means there is not much space under the spending cap for new programs, Groark said.

"On the revenue side, the state is going very well," she said, "but what we have found is that we have a number of things working against us."

Foley said the administration decision to limit its promises for urban initiative this year are "part of the false promise of the income tax."

"Those of us who were in opposition understood that all the rhetoric was hollow," Foley said. "And what we have done is, we have today a government that satisfies neither the taxpayers, nor the clients of the state nor the constituents of the state."

Democratic State Chairman Edward L. Marcus said the problem is not with the state's tax structure, but with the sorry state of the economy, which would limit state revenue no matter what tax the state relied on